Enterprise star says: Don't blame us for killing Star Trek on TV

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Some people happen to love Star Trek: Enterprise, while others woefully hate it and even blame the series for killing the franchise. But actor Connor Trinneer, who played the Enterprise NX-01's beloved engineer, Cmdr. Charles "Trip" Tucker, says that's nonsense.

When Enterprise last aired on May 13, 2005, Star Trek had been on the air nonstop for more than 18 years, starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation back in 1987. Enterprise was expected to last for seven seasons like TNG, Deep Space Nine and Voyager before it, but it was canceled after its fourth season, right about when the series was really hitting its stride and finding its footing.

Whether you're in the camp of those who think that ''Enterprise was canceled because it wasn't true enough to the Star Trek spirit'' or that ''it was playing with established canon too much'' or that ''it sucked'' (which we think it didn't at all) doesn't matter. In the end, the real reason for the cancellation was franchise fatigue.

Which brings us to the question: Are some fans really openly blaming the show for the end of one of the most beloved franchises of all time?

Here's what the always-awesome Connor Trinneer—who also happened to have played one of the coolest Stargate Atlantis characters ever, the Wraith Michael—told Star Trek.com when asked about that type of fan reaction in a recent interview:

I haven't heard anybody who blamed our show for doing that to the franchise. I think our show, in a sense, got kind of burned. Look, as far as I know, if our ratings weren't equal to Voyager or to DS9, they weren't very far off. We were doing the same thing as far as fans, people watching our show, that everybody else was doing in regards to the business side of it. It didn't seem that different to me. If you look back at that network and what was airing on that network, we were just the elephant walking through the room. We were not the thing that that network was looking to do by the time we showed up. Voyager was the cornerstone for it. So was our show, for the network, in certain sense, probably in a matter of making money. But in terms of the audience they were trying to get, it certainly wasn't a science-fiction audience. You know what I mean? And that didn't help. When you have shows on networks, you want people to stay there because they watch advertising, show after show. You had to go watch our show. That's not to say that other shows don't have to have that happen as well, but at the time, on the network we were on, that was the deal. If you were looking for young teenagers doing whatever and then we showed up, you were going to change the channel. But if you were looking for us, you'd watch it.

Responsible for any demise? I think that was nonsense. When you look back on it, all of the shows took a couple of years to find their sea legs. And I think, absolutely, we got our sea legs. Is there an argument that you can only go to the well so many times? Absolutely. It's also an argument I'd agree with. How many years in a row can you keep it going? We happened to be the show that, for whatever reason, they said, "Stop." They were expensive. They were all expensive. But in terms of what we did and what we accomplished, I think everyone involved with it, myself included, has nothing but pride for what we did and we hang our hat on that.